The Hanen I’m Ready!™ Advanced Workshop for ABC and Beyond™ Certified Members

Our popular ABC and Beyond™ Advanced Workshop has helped Hanen members teach countless educators how to build the early literacy skills of their students. But while the strategies taught in the ABC and Beyond workshop have been useful in the classroom, participants have always wanted to take them even further – into the home.

That’s why we created the Hanen I’m Ready!™ Advanced Workshop for ABC and Beyond Certified members. I’m Ready! takes the ABC and Beyond strategies that have proven so effective in the classroom and explains how they can be used at home, by parents of children aged 3-5 years old. For the first time, The Hanen Centre has created a program that takes the approach our ABC and Beyond members already know and love and applies it to a different audience, ensuring that children can receive the same support no matter where they are and truly giving them the chance to learn throughout the entire day.

Why Take the I’m Ready!™ Workshop?

Certification to lead a research-based, early literacy intervention program to groups of parents

The I’m Ready! Advanced Workshop certifies participants to lead The Hanen I’m Ready!™ Program for Building Early Literacy in the Home. The I’m Ready!™ Program offers parents the chance to help their child (aged 3-5 years old) develop the early literacy skills they need before starting school. Like the strategies in all our other programs, the strategies in I’m Ready! were designed to be truly flexible: parents will learn how they can promote early literacy while reading, but also throughout the entire day.

I’m Ready! strategies come from the evidence-based ABC and Beyond Program. Multiple studies have demonstrated the power of shared reading and other literacy focused activities in promoting language and literacy development in young children. While ABC and Beyond empowers educators to help children develop emergent literacy skills, I’m Ready! gives that same power to parents, giving children complete literacy support both in the classroom and at home.

I’m Ready! is also the first Hanen Program to include sessions for parents and their children. While parents work with the program leader, their children are in another room with trained support staff – having fun while also taking part in activities that promote their early literacy skills and language development. The parents and children then come together to practice what they’ve learned while the program leader and trained support staff offer coaching and feedback, to help parents put the strategies they’ve just learned into practice.

Training for support staff

After completing this workshop, participants receive all the training materials needed to prepare support staff for running the children’s sessions and assisting with parent coaching – at no extra charge. I’m Ready! is the only Hanen workshop to include training for multiple people, giving participants the support they need to run the program, and giving other staff additional training they can use both in the program and in other contexts.

Online training

The I’m Ready! workshop is completely online. Three self-study components, alternate with three online live sessions with Janice Greenberg, the I’m Ready! Program Creator and Director that can be accessed from anywhere.

There’s no need to travel – the workshop can all be done from home, on a wide selection of devices. And because it’s online, we’re able to offer this workshop at a lower price.

A flexible workshop for a flexible program

The online training makes I’m Ready! our most flexible workshop yet. But that flexibility continues as participants begin to offer the I’m Ready! Program, too. We’ve listened to feedback on offering programs, and we’ve found several ways to make the program even easier to offer.

While offering weekly sessions is suggested, it’s also possible to adjust the duration of the program if it’s more convenient to have longer intervals between each session. The program can also be offered in a variety of settings: it’s appropriate for a speech and language clinic, an early years centre or a school. In addition, while offering the full program of six sessions and an orientation session is encouraged, we also have several pre-approved shorter versions that participants can offer instead, depending on parent need and availability.

Downloadable materials

After completing the workshop, participants receive all the materials needed to offer the I’m Ready! program. These materials (including the Making Hanen Happen Leaders Guide and Program Slides with Embedded Videos) are all downloadable.

Please note that while the workshop does not include the I’m Ready! guidebook (an essential part of the program), participants receive a one-use discount code to help them order the book and become familiar with the content they’ll share with parents in the program.

Ongoing support

As Hanen members certified in I’m Ready!, participants will receive frequent updates on further developments in the I’m Ready! Program, as well as the latest news and research in emergent literacy development. The I’m Ready! Program Director and the Hanen Team are also always happy to offer support in any way we can.